Jeanskynebu the audience applauded
Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
ginafreeson This movie was far FAR!more insulting than any of the images of black faced media it honored by portraying...I find Spike Lee to be a tan skinned black man whom is talented some what but emotionally unstable. And I notice though I haven't see anyone address it, he really thinks lighter skinned, such as himself are better than the darker ones. Notice this is why the lighter skinned men and woman are more heroic and interesting, the darker ones are more apt to have issues. Malcolm X was the only movie he made that was up to snuff...and he couldn't sway the color thing because it was based on a real story...otherwise the LOL dark skinned Muslims would have instead been drug dealer and gang-bangers! It is so obvious that Spike lee got a hate for white men and a disdain for dark women...count how many he has dared to have in any of his movies ...they are the ones that find it harder to get work you would think he would have lend a helping hand but truly people, he do not like them...SPIKE LEE IS A INSANE MAN HE IS A SELF-HATING WHITE HATING DARK WOMEN HATING CONFUSED BIGOT!BTW the worst most disgusting part of this movie is the very unnecessary end...the way he showed all of hose black instances...it made me sicken...the NAA along with other good people many were white also fought hard so our babies and their babies, wouldn't have to see this shyt, in a common media...they won that battle but he this idiot brings it back long after it no longer an issue even O.o i found Spike lees bamboozled the most insulting supposed to be entertaining derogatory thing I have ever saw in my 60 years, I hope that someone in the future do as the NAA did and have it removed from available fair...so our great, great grandchildren will never even know what a Bamboozled was...I pray for this!
lydia fresh I saw Bamboozled on cable years ago and could not watch the entire movie. I was very uncomfortable with the racist minstrel characters and those dehumanizing vintage toys. Flash forward to 2012 and I happened across it again. Wow, what a difference 10 years make. Since the election of Barack Obama, seemingly normal white people have lost their collective minds. They spent years denying the president's legal citizenship. They ed anti government Tea Party groups not because they did not wanted their big gov't social security checks but because they wanted to hang with a bunch of aging bigots carrying signs of the President dressed as a Kenyan native.Where does Bamboozled fit in? These very same people love Herman Cain. It took me awhile but I finally got it, Mr Lee. Herman Cain is the Negro that white America is comfortable with. A self confessed sitting on the back of the bus entertaining... "awwwwww shucky ducky now" Negro. The Racist Tea Party folks could not get enough of him and his simplistic 9-9-9 plan. . When white women accused Mr Cain of sexual harassment, that just comforted them more because everyone knows Negros love white women. I guarantee you that if Herman Cain had darkened his skin with a burnt cork, the Tea Party folks would have lapped it up. His audience could have easily started to sport a black face too and proclaimed loudly to the press, "See we aren't racist!" The Herman Cain train exemplified everything that Spike Lee was saying in this dark comedy. Americans do not want to see African Americans represented by the Bill Cosby Show or the educated, functional Obama family. They want a minstrel show.The movie is heartbreaking as is the behavior of many Americans. Thank you Spike Lee.
OutsideHollywoodLand Faizon Love in Dinner for Five, July-'02 (On Spike Lee interjecting himself into his own pictures) "...don't do that, it looks stupid, don't cast yourself...the weakest thing can be the biggest blemish." I beg to disagree with actor Faizon Love (of "Friday" fame), the biggest blemish of a Spike Lee film is it's self-righteous preachy endings.Don't get me wrong — as an American white woman, I've wallowed in buckets of liberal guilt for the past U. S. genocidal policies. But Mr. Lee does not make films for marginally enlightened white folks.And while almost all of Hollywood's directors offer up a sanitized view of the process of racism, director Spike Lee does not. I can always count on Lee to "tell it like it is", and nowhere is this more evident than in his latest cinematic effort, Bamboozled.The key word is effort, because Lee is prone to hit us over the head with his point — again and again and again. It's as though he doubts that white America is smart enough to get his message and concerned that black America may have forgotten it while climbing up the assimilation ladder.And while I may squirm at his intellectual contempt for the audience, and be irritated that he plays his usual double standard, where EVERY white character as a racist stereotype), I'm drawn to the single - minded courage of his view.Bamboozled grits and grates on every nerve and then does a deft tap-dance on our last one---stretching it for all it's worth. For everyone in this movie becomes a giant-sized stereotype. And it leaves this viewer hoping he did this on purpose, but knowing its just the same old lack of self-control.And yes — we got the point, Mr. Lee — no thanks to your sledgehammer method of directing, that blacks who play roles to serve a racist stereotype are "the enemy" and deserve only death.I've seen almost every film that Spike Lee has created --- The Girl's Gotta Have It, Malcolm X, Girl 6, Do The Right Thing, Jungle Fever, etc. Each movie resonates with Lee's caustic and uncompromising world view — and there's nothing wrong with this — every great director keeps making the same movie of their limited viewpoint. Yet Lee is young enough for me to wish that he can cast off the S.O.S. — Same Old Stereotype - and create something truly original.In a way, Faizon Love is right on target — for while Spike Lee is an Oscar-caliber director, with piercing insight and uncommon talent, he still lacks any objectivity to truly "direct" that vision to it's desired end.For rather than just making a point that's obvious to all, we'd rather see whats' beyond that one-dimensional image to embrace a more three-dimensional viewing experience. So while America has been Bamboozled by racist stereotyping, Lee is still playing to it.
Hancock_the_Superb TV writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is tired of having his TV concepts rejected by the studio. Accused by his ultra-"hip" white boss Dunwitty (Michael Rappaport) of not being "black" enough, an enraged Pierre comes up with an outlandish idea: a modern-day minstrel show, complete with black-face, musical revue numbers, racial epithets, and the most ridiculous stereotypes imaginable. He enlists the aide of his reluctant secretary Sloane (Jada Pinkett Smith) and two street dancers Manray and Womack (Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson) desperate for a buck. Pierre is flabbergasted when the network accepts the show, and then becomes a pop culture phenomenon. But not everyone enjoys the racial epithets the show provides, and the Maumaus, a group of wannabe gangstas/rappers, decide to take matters into their own hands - with tragic results.Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" is certainly an ambitious film. It is an unremittingly vicious satire of the portrayal of blacks in popular media, a topic all too open to attack from Lee's inflammatory eye. However, having set up a potentially great and scathing satire, Bamboozled ultimately fails by being just too broad and over-the-top in its target.Lee is certainly right in attacking media portrayal of African-Americans. And for the early sections, it works. The most effective is the portrayal of pop culture - namely gangsta rap and hip-hop. The Maumaus are ridiculous posers who don't even notice that one of their number is white. The TV ads for Blow Cola and Timmi Hiln!gger showcase the artificiality and toxic nature of gangsta culture. Women are hos, bitches, and sluts; the men are cool because they do drugs and kill people. Lee's double-edged sword goes after the white media (embodied by the embarrassingly patronizing boss Dunwitty) for perpetuating such images, but also the blacks who embrace it. Very few societal targets, regardless of race or position, escape Lee's critical eye. The film's use of clips from minstrel shows of the past, as well as cartoons and other caricature portrayals, as well as the commentary of Sloane, to make the point reverberate. All of this is brilliantly done, and the witty dialog and character interactions of the first half indicate that Lee has winner on his hands.But the film ultimately fails due to the methods it employs. Seriously... is there a sentient human being alive who thinks that there would be a TV audience for a MINSTREL SHOW? Black face is such an inherently, blatantly offensive concept that it's impossible to take it seriously. For lack of a better word, it's overkill. And by showing it again and again, Lee rather overdoes (and undermines) his point. We get it; this show is racist and humiliating. Wouldn't Lee have better made his point by keeping the focus on the contemporary equivalent, or at least gone about it in a more subtle manner? Of course, "Bamboozled" is a satire, so hyperbole is expected. But, there are limits to this, particularly within the media of film. Be too outlandish and over-the-top, and the point is lost. Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" works because it is a written essay, where the venom beneath Swift's seemingly earnest tone is almost undetectable. In "Bamboozled", however, we see starkly outrageous images of minstrel shows about black-faced, watermelon-eating, chicken-stealing blacks (and the black-faced fans who love and emulate them). And that image in and of itself blots out the point Lee is trying to make with such images. We don't that the media is demeaning towards blacks; we the minstrel show.The movie is also damaged by its cop-out ending, which uses violence as an easy solution to the problems it has set up. One could argue that Lee was attempting to show the detrimental effects Delacroix's show had on society. Thanks, but I'm not buying that. Whatever justice that argument has is killed by the ham-fisted, rushed way the climax is executed.The acting is uniformly solid. Damon Wayans, an actor I usually dislike, makes Pierre an intriguing character. Pierre's descent into hell - ultimately embracing the stereotypes he presents through his work - is fascinating. Jada Pinkett-Smith gives a quietly effective performance as the film's conscience, although her actions at the end seem ridiculously out-of-character. Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson are both extremely likable as two characters who slowly realize what they're doing is wrong. Michael Rappaport's hopeless studio VP is hysterical, and provides some of the film's best moments.In short, "Bamboozled" is an extremely ambitious film that starts out great, then becomes so outlandish and over-the-top its point is obscured. Regardless, one should note it is very much a point worth making.6/10
